Cultural Omnivore No. 10

A Listing of What We Love

Stephen Shore, American photographer best known for capturing straightforward, unglamorous images. Using cheap automatic cameras to large-format cameras in the 1970s, he pioneered the use of color. The Museum of Modern Art’s exhibit encompasses the entirety of the artist’s work of the last five decades. “Stephen Shore’s photographs are attentive to ordinary scenes of daily experience, yet through color–and composition–Shore transforms the mundane into subjects of thoughtful meditation. ” Through May 28, The Museum of Modern Art, NYC

“D.V. is the mesmerizing autobiography of one of the 20th century’s greatest fashion icons, Diana Vreeland, the one-time fashion editor of Harper’s Bazaar and editor-in-chief of Vogue…proves herself a brilliant raconteur as she carries the reader along on her whirlwind life—from English palaces to the nightclubs of Paris in the 1930s to the heart of New York high society, hobnobbing with everyone who was anyone, from Queen Mary to Clark Gable to Coco Chanel.” – HarperCollins

“Charismatic and controversial German artist Joseph Beuys (1921-1986) was a messianic figure, alternately considered a shaman, a radical political activist, and a breakthrough artistic genius. Filmmaker Andres Veiel mines a rich trove of never-before-seen archival footage, showing how Beuys’s teachings (at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf), installations (using felt and fat), ‘happenings’ (covering himself in honey and gold leaf in How to Explain Paintings to a Dead Hare or locking himself in a room with a coyote in I Like America and America Likes Me), and lectures (“money shouldn’t be a commodity”) argued for a more expansive view of the role of art in our lives.” – Film Forum

Music: GIVE HIM A GREAT BIG KISS
Artist: The Shangri-Las
Album: The Best of the Shangri-Las
Lyrics: “Big bulky sweaters to match his eyes (tell me more)
Dirty fingernails (tell me more)
Oh boy, what a prize (tell me more)
Tight, tapered pants, high button shoes (he’s so cool)
He’s always looking like he’s got the blues (he’s so cool)
And when I see him in the street
My heart takes a leap and skips a beat
Gonna walk right up to him
Give him a great big kiss, mwah!
Tell him that I love him, tell him that I care
Tell him that I’ll always be there”

Opening Paragraph: “He’s going to die any minute now,” a college classmate of mine said in 1994 when the Chilean poet Nicanor Parra had just turned eighty and we were eighteen. I asked if the poet was sick or something. “When people are eighty, it’s highly probable that they’ll die at any minute,” he replied. We were on campus in Santiago, doing nothing, pretty high. Someone said that there was an event at Cine Arte Alameda to celebrate Parra, and the usual four or five of us headed over—uninvited, of course, but we managed to sneak in. I remember almost nothing about the event. The place was packed. Any rock band would love to have half the fans that Parra did.”